This paper seeks to draw out the main themes of the debate on the current financial crisis as published in the special issue of critical perspectives on international business Vol. 5 Nos 1/2 (2009) and place them in the context of subsequent events. It also considers what conclusions can be drawn both for future policy and for the conduct of future academic research.
The paper overviews existing literature and summarises the main findings, focusing particularly on some topics deemed important and interesting for directing future research.
The paper finds that while the neoclassical approach to finance has evidently failed there is currently little consensus on how to replace it. This opens up the possibility of debate, new avenues for research and ultimately radical change.
The paper argues that more interactions between academic and finance practitioners are needed. Research in finance should be interdisciplinary or embed the insights from other disciplines and it should put behavioural finance under mainstream attention. The teaching of management and finance should also be more informed by issues of ethics, politics, social corporate responsibility, distribution of wealth and power and it should stimulate more critical and creative thinking.
The authors argue that capitalism works well only when it is adequately regulated and when there is a solid mechanism of balancing and counterbalancing of powers among the major players. The paper therefore calls for a “democratisation” of capitalism, to stop the trend of growing global inequality and reverse the existent plutocratic capitalism.
The paper outlines several viewpoints and interpretations of the financial crisis taken from the extant literature and hence offers a reflection on several dimensions that shaped the crisis.
